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A review by rat_enthusiast
Confessions by Kanae Minato
3.0
Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. However, there were definitely aspects that I had to consciously ignore to enjoy it that may not bother other readers as much. Unfortunately, I have a lot of small things that got under my skin while reading this, so this review will be quite long.
To start off with a positive: I can't underestate how interesting it was to watch the narrative unfold from different angles and learn new details that recontextualize characters and events and motivations. However, there were definitely times that I started to feel the drag of being re-told a scene that we had already been told multiple times. The author recognizes this, though, and does a fairly decent job at making repeated scenes brief.
This part might solely be an issue that I experienced, but I also felt like the story was halting in its steps to become and argument about the schooling systems or how to raise children. It wouldn't surprise me if the author (who was a home economics teacher, according to the back of the book) wrote this partly to get her own feelings about these issues off her chest. At times these arguments and concepts are woven cleverly into the narrative in ways that make you wonder about these issues (for example, the relationship between media and the glorification of horrific crime). However, other times it feels like I'm at a family reunion listening to my aunt complain about how annoying the parents of her students are or how other teachers baby students. This isn't to say I disagree with the points she makes, only that it feels like they're clumsily inserted rants inserted into an otherwise thrilling story.
Characters like Terado and Naoki's mother felt less like real characters and more like caricatures of certain archetypes of people (the overly-friendly teacher and the overprotective mom). Again, I'm not angry that the author wanted to criticize teachers who lack appropriate boundaries and attempt to martyr themselves for attention, or parents that coddle their children and protect them from any accountability. These are incredibly relevant behaviors. However, these characters are ridiculously unsubtle and exaggerated. It felt like the author was banging a hammer into a frying pan and yelling "This teaching style is bad!! He acts like he's helping them but he's actually hurting them!!". For Naoki's mother specifically, the character started off so unabashedly dislikeable and obnoxious that later attempts to be more nuanced about the reasonings behind her parenting style (her own trauma and the generational cycle of bad parenting) fall flat because she feels like a cartoon version of a real argument. It was like watching a comedy skit about an angry Karen yelling at a barista, which isn't what I want from a novel attempting to explore dark issues.
I also felt like the details of the story felt... less than realistic, requiring me to actively suspend my disbelief. The polygraph watch, for instance (polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, especially if it's in the form of a watch). It's only a brief part of the story, but there were other moments like that, such as the class president managing to test the milk for HIV. Perhaps I'm wrong, but in my lab experience, testing a discarded milk container for trace amounts of HIV would be unreliable at best and laughable at worst. Although maybe the point was to be aware of the fact that she was a child play-acting at real science? Yet if that were the case, I'd expect the other characters to comment on it, but I digress. The dialogue also required huge suspension of disbelief. I do understand parts of it--children, especially the self-impressed ones we see in this story, are awfully good at making themselves sound smarter than they are. But overall, the dialogue just felt much too similar to an adult talking than a middle schooler. If the characters were high schoolers I would understand more, but then of course the conflict surrounding the Juvenile Law wouldn't apply, and there would be less of a shock aspect to the crimes.
And Moriguchi's speech at the end sounded much too dramatic for me. It's hard to explain why, but it sounds like the author simply took a template that lazy Hollywood writers use to write their heroes speeches. She even uses "I suppose you're wondering why your bomb hasn't gone off. Well, you see, I've foiled your dastardly plans" (paraphrasing). It sounds unnatural and stilted and nothing at all like a mother in grief. Although, to be fair, it's hard to know if this should be pinned on the author or the translator. A part of me feels bad about criticizing a book not originally in English for 'sounding off', but I also feel like translation itself is a skill, like writing is a skill, and its important to recognize when its done right as well as wrong. The first chapter has none of the style and flow issues I had with later segments, so it's clear that there's no inherent problem.
And of course, it has to be said that the use of HIV is... less than desirable. I honestly thought after reading the first chapter that this was written in the 80's because of how much it read like that kind of fear-mongering. It even feels a bit hypocritical that Moriguchi criticizes the students for looking so disgusted at the mention of HIV, and later on saying that she finds it odd they were grossed out by HIV but intrigued by stories of murder, but she still uses that fear of HIV to punish them. I also don't like imagining her using her dying husband's infected blood without his consent, then criticizing him for being against it by saying that he failed at being a father by not deliberately infected two boys with HIV. There also seemed to be some kind of nasty feelings about HIV, referring to those who got it through sex as 'deserving' it, as opposed to those who got it through needles due to illness they have. This could all be an intentional critique of the way HIV is viewed in Japan, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Oh, and if you want a novel where any, literally any of the characters are good people, don't read this novel. Very bleak view on humanity. Very Lord of the Flies "children are evil"-esque.
With all that being said, I still very much enjoyed the book. It's a testament to the intrigue that I managed to type that long rant and still be able to say I recommend the book. I love following the morality of the characters and seeing how your feelings change as the story progresses. After chapter one you understandably despise Shuya. However, a part of you begins to sympathize with him as we see how harsh other students can become and how others get caught in the crossfire. Sure, murder is wrong, but other students are also cruel, and also he didn't really kill her... and then, of course, later chapters remind you of just how detestable he is. Any book that makes me feel for a child murderer, even if only for a moment, deserves praise. And the book manages to present many different perspectives on ongoing issues throughout the analysis of one event. On one hand, Moriguchi is presented as a good teacher for her praising of student's achievements and her valuing academic intelligence and seeing cram school as a valuable opportunity, but she also criticizes how Shuya uses his academic intelligence as a way to prove he's better than others, rightly pointed out how idiotic it is to act like something as trivial as "getting better grades" makes you a fundamentally better person. Academic achievement should be valued, but the overvalue of it in school systems can be harmful. I also loved how something would be briefly mentioned and brought up later as a more important aspect. It made you, as the reader, feel smart for making connections and remembering pieces of dialogue.
So if you can ignore some of what I consider small annoyances, I recommend this.
To start off with a positive: I can't underestate how interesting it was to watch the narrative unfold from different angles and learn new details that recontextualize characters and events and motivations. However, there were definitely times that I started to feel the drag of being re-told a scene that we had already been told multiple times. The author recognizes this, though, and does a fairly decent job at making repeated scenes brief.
This part might solely be an issue that I experienced, but I also felt like the story was halting in its steps to become and argument about the schooling systems or how to raise children. It wouldn't surprise me if the author (who was a home economics teacher, according to the back of the book) wrote this partly to get her own feelings about these issues off her chest. At times these arguments and concepts are woven cleverly into the narrative in ways that make you wonder about these issues (for example, the relationship between media and the glorification of horrific crime). However, other times it feels like I'm at a family reunion listening to my aunt complain about how annoying the parents of her students are or how other teachers baby students. This isn't to say I disagree with the points she makes, only that it feels like they're clumsily inserted rants inserted into an otherwise thrilling story.
Characters like Terado and Naoki's mother felt less like real characters and more like caricatures of certain archetypes of people (the overly-friendly teacher and the overprotective mom). Again, I'm not angry that the author wanted to criticize teachers who lack appropriate boundaries and attempt to martyr themselves for attention, or parents that coddle their children and protect them from any accountability. These are incredibly relevant behaviors. However, these characters are ridiculously unsubtle and exaggerated. It felt like the author was banging a hammer into a frying pan and yelling "This teaching style is bad!! He acts like he's helping them but he's actually hurting them!!". For Naoki's mother specifically, the character started off so unabashedly dislikeable and obnoxious that later attempts to be more nuanced about the reasonings behind her parenting style (her own trauma and the generational cycle of bad parenting) fall flat because she feels like a cartoon version of a real argument. It was like watching a comedy skit about an angry Karen yelling at a barista, which isn't what I want from a novel attempting to explore dark issues.
I also felt like the details of the story felt... less than realistic, requiring me to actively suspend my disbelief. The polygraph watch, for instance (polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, especially if it's in the form of a watch). It's only a brief part of the story, but there were other moments like that, such as the class president managing to test the milk for HIV. Perhaps I'm wrong, but in my lab experience, testing a discarded milk container for trace amounts of HIV would be unreliable at best and laughable at worst. Although maybe the point was to be aware of the fact that she was a child play-acting at real science? Yet if that were the case, I'd expect the other characters to comment on it, but I digress. The dialogue also required huge suspension of disbelief. I do understand parts of it--children, especially the self-impressed ones we see in this story, are awfully good at making themselves sound smarter than they are. But overall, the dialogue just felt much too similar to an adult talking than a middle schooler. If the characters were high schoolers I would understand more, but then of course the conflict surrounding the Juvenile Law wouldn't apply, and there would be less of a shock aspect to the crimes.
And Moriguchi's speech at the end sounded much too dramatic for me. It's hard to explain why, but it sounds like the author simply took a template that lazy Hollywood writers use to write their heroes speeches. She even uses "I suppose you're wondering why your bomb hasn't gone off. Well, you see, I've foiled your dastardly plans" (paraphrasing). It sounds unnatural and stilted and nothing at all like a mother in grief. Although, to be fair, it's hard to know if this should be pinned on the author or the translator. A part of me feels bad about criticizing a book not originally in English for 'sounding off', but I also feel like translation itself is a skill, like writing is a skill, and its important to recognize when its done right as well as wrong. The first chapter has none of the style and flow issues I had with later segments, so it's clear that there's no inherent problem.
And of course, it has to be said that the use of HIV is... less than desirable. I honestly thought after reading the first chapter that this was written in the 80's because of how much it read like that kind of fear-mongering. It even feels a bit hypocritical that Moriguchi criticizes the students for looking so disgusted at the mention of HIV, and later on saying that she finds it odd they were grossed out by HIV but intrigued by stories of murder, but she still uses that fear of HIV to punish them. I also don't like imagining her using her dying husband's infected blood without his consent, then criticizing him for being against it by saying that he failed at being a father by not deliberately infected two boys with HIV. There also seemed to be some kind of nasty feelings about HIV, referring to those who got it through sex as 'deserving' it, as opposed to those who got it through needles due to illness they have. This could all be an intentional critique of the way HIV is viewed in Japan, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Oh, and if you want a novel where any, literally any of the characters are good people, don't read this novel. Very bleak view on humanity. Very Lord of the Flies "children are evil"-esque.
With all that being said, I still very much enjoyed the book. It's a testament to the intrigue that I managed to type that long rant and still be able to say I recommend the book. I love following the morality of the characters and seeing how your feelings change as the story progresses. After chapter one you understandably despise Shuya. However, a part of you begins to sympathize with him as we see how harsh other students can become and how others get caught in the crossfire. Sure, murder is wrong, but other students are also cruel, and also he didn't really kill her... and then, of course, later chapters remind you of just how detestable he is. Any book that makes me feel for a child murderer, even if only for a moment, deserves praise. And the book manages to present many different perspectives on ongoing issues throughout the analysis of one event. On one hand, Moriguchi is presented as a good teacher for her praising of student's achievements and her valuing academic intelligence and seeing cram school as a valuable opportunity, but she also criticizes how Shuya uses his academic intelligence as a way to prove he's better than others, rightly pointed out how idiotic it is to act like something as trivial as "getting better grades" makes you a fundamentally better person. Academic achievement should be valued, but the overvalue of it in school systems can be harmful. I also loved how something would be briefly mentioned and brought up later as a more important aspect. It made you, as the reader, feel smart for making connections and remembering pieces of dialogue.
So if you can ignore some of what I consider small annoyances, I recommend this.